Saxe Holm's Stories, Second Series

By Helen Maria Fiske Hunt Jackson

"Saxe Holm's Stories, Second Series" by Helen Maria Fiske Hunt Jackson. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Dec 8, 2020
• ISBN: 4064066084868

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Helen Maria Fiske Hunt Jackson

Saxe Holm's Stories, Second Series

Published by Good Press, 2020

[e-mail]

EAN 4064066084868

Table of Contents

A FOUR-LEAVED CLOVER.

PART I.

FARMER BASSETT'S ROMANCE.

MY TOURMALINE.

JOE HALE'S RED STOCKINGS

SUSAN LAWTON'S ESCAPE.

A FOUR-LEAVED CLOVER.

PART I.

Table of Contents

SERGEANT KARL REUTNER had never found a four-leaved clover. He had often looked for them—at home in Bavaria, in the green meadows at the foot of the giant glacier Watzman, and in America, on the sunny prairies of Illinois. But he had never found one. It is luck; I shall not have luck before I find the four leaf of clover, he had said, half jesting, many a time, to himself or to gay comrades. And in his secret heart he was not without a shadow of superstition about it. It had again and again happened that some one by his side had stooped and picked a four-leaved clover, upon which he was just on the point of treading, while his eyes were searching eagerly for it. It did seem as if Karl could never see the magic little leaf, and why should this not mean some thing? Whence came the world-wide belief in the spell, if it were merely an idle fancy?

But now Karl Reutner was to find his four ​leaved clover. There it was, gently waving in the wind, not two feet away from his eyes. Karl was lying low on the ground. He was not looking for four-leaved clover; he was listening with every faculty sharply concentrated, waiting for a sound which seemed to him inexplicably delayed. He was lying in a trench before Gettysburg, and he was impatient for the order to fire.

The gentle summer breeze stirred the grass blades on the upper edge of the trench, and parting them, showed one tall four-leaved clover. With an exclamation of delight, Karl dropped his musket, picked the clover, fastened it in the band of his cap, and lifting up the cap, imprudently waved it to the right and left, calling down the line: Good luck, boys! The four leaf of clover!

The next Karl knew, it was night—dark, starless, chilly night. He was alone; a dreadful silence, broken now and then by more dreadful groans, reigned all around. He was naked; he could not move; terrible pains were racking his breast. Something was firmly clutched in his right hand, but he could not lift his arm to see what it was; neither could he unclasp his hand.

The battle of Gettysburg was over, and Karl was shot through the lungs. Good luck, boys! The four leaf of clover! had been his last words, hardly spoken before the waving cap had proved a mark for a rebel sharp-shooter, and Karl had fallen back apparently dead.

​No time then for one comrade to help another. In a few moments more his company had gone, leaving behind many of its brave fellows wounded, dying, dead. In the night Karl had been stripped by rebel prowlers, and left for dead. Only his cap remained; that was so firmly clutched in his right hand, they could not take it from him. Withered, drooping above the tarnished gilt wreath on the band, hung the four-leaved clover; but Karl could not see it. He remembered it, however, and as he struggled in his feverish half delirium to recall the last moments before he fell, he muttered to himself: The four leaf of clover brought this of luck; bad luck to begin.

The feeble sounds caught the ear of a party of rebels, searching for their wounded. As the dark lantern flashed its slender ray of light upon Karl's figure, and the rebel officer saw the United States badge on the cap, he turned away. But at Karl's voice and the broken English: Water! For God's love, one water! he turned back. The blue eyes and the yellow hair had a spell in them for the dark-haired Southerner. There had been a Gretchen once with whom he had roamed many a moonlight night, in Heidelberg. Her eyes and her hair, and the pretty broken English she had learned from him, were like these.

Pick him up, boys; he 'll count for one, damn him! were the words under which he hid his sudden sympathy from the angry and resentful ​men who obeyed his orders. But afterward he went many times secretly to the ambulance to see if that yellow-haired German boy were still alive, and were covered by blankets.

Of the terrible journey to Libby Prison Karl knew nothing. A few days after it he came again, slowly and painfully, to his consciousness, as he had that first night on the battle-field, like one awakening from a frightful and confused dream. He was on the damp dungeon floor; a pretense of a pallet beneath him. When he tried to speak, a strange, gurgling sound filled his throat.

Better not try to talk, said the surgeon, who happened to be standing near.

Am I dying? said Karl.

No, not just yet, laughed the brutal surgeon; but you won't last long. Our boys have n't left you any lungs."

It was too true. The bullet had gone through both lungs. In one there was a hole into which a man might put his fist. Karl shut his eyes and again the vision of the waving clover leaf floated before them. He fell asleep, and dreamed that he was lying in a field filled with four-leaved clovers, and that a beautiful, dark-haired girl was gathering them and bringing them to him by handfuls. When he waked he saw a kind face bending over him, and felt something pressed between his lips. One of his fellow prisoners was trying to feed him with bread soaked in wine. Ah, the heroes of ​Libby Prison! Almost all those who came out alive from that hell of tortures, did so because other men had freely spent their lives for them.

All Karl's fellow prisoners loved him. His fair face, beautiful blue eyes, and golden-brown hair, his broken English, and his pathetic patience, appealed to every heart. Every man saved the soft part of his bread for him; and on this, with occasionally a few drops of wine, he lived—that is, he did not die; but he did not gain; the wound did not heal, and each day his strength grew less and less, long after it had seemed that he could not be weaker and live. But hope never forsook him. The four-leaved clover, folded in a bit of paper, was hid in the lining of his cap. Sometimes he took it out, showed it to the prisoners, and told them the story.

It has brought to me such bad luck, you see; but I think it shall bring one luck better; it is a true sign; there is time yet.

The men shrugged their shoulders. They thought Karl a little weakened in intellect by his sufferings; but they did not contradict him.

Three months later Karl was again lying on the ground at midnight, alone, helpless. An exchange of prisoners had been arranged, and he, with most of his friends, had been carried to City Point. They arrived there at five in the afternoon. The sun was still high and hot, and Karl being one of the feeblest of the prisoners was laid behind an old hogshead, for shade. Boat load after boat ​load pushed off from the wharf; but he was not taken. He could not speak except in the faintest whisper; he could not move; there he lay, utterly helpless, hearing all the stir and bustle of the loading of the boats, then the plashing of the oars, then the silence, then the return of the boats, more bustle, more departures, and then the dreadful silence again.

He had been laid in such a position that he could see nothing but the planks of the hogshead. It was old and decayed, and rats were crawling in and out of it. They crawled and ran over Karl, and he could not stir. The sun went down; the twilight deepened into darkness. The last boat had gone; in an agony almost maddening Karl lay listening for the oars, and trying to persuade himself that it was not yet too late for one more boat to come back.

A cold wind blew off the water; he had nothing over him but a bit of ragged carpet; under his head an old army coat rolled up for a pillow.

A rebel soldier came by and tried to take this away. Karl spoke no word, but lifted his eyes and looked him full in the face. The man dropped his hold of the overcoat, and walked away. Eight o'clock—nine—ten, no sound on the deserted wharf except the dull thud of the waves against its bides, and the occasional splash of a fierce rat, swimming away. But Karl heard nothing. He had swooned. The fatigue of the trip, the exposure to ​the air, the long day without food, and still more the utter loss of hope, had drained his last strength. However, in after days, recalling this terrible night, he always said, I not once my four leaf of clover forget. I say to myself, it is the luck to go to Heaven that it have bring me; and yet all the time, I know in my heart that I am not to die; that I have luck in the over world yet.

Karl was right. By one of those inexplicable but uncontrollable impulses, on which the life and the death of man have so often hung, the young officer, who had had charge of moving the prisoners from the wharf to the transport, was led to return once more to make sure that no man had been left behind.

Karl was not the only one. There were two others who had been laid, as he was, in the shade, and out of sight, and who had been too weak to call for help. It was nearly midnight when these three unconscious and apparently dying men were carried on board the ship. The other two soon revived, but Karl knew nothing until he had been for two days tenderly nursed in one of the Philadelphia hospitals. Even then he had only a half consciousness of himself, or his surroundings. Fever had set in; he was delirious a great part of the time, for two months; and when he was not, his broken English, and his frequent reference to the four leaf of clover, prevented the nurses from believing him fully sane.

​At last one blessed Sunday, there came to the hospital a young lady who spoke German. At the first sound of the broken syllables, she went quickly to his bedside, and saying to the nurse, I can speak to this poor fellow in his own language; she said a few words to Karl in German. The effect was magical.

He lifted himself up suddenly in bed, and exclaiming Ach mein Gott, poured out such a flood of incoherent, grateful, bewildered German that the best of scholars need not have been ashamed at failing to comprehend him. Karl had found a friend. Every day she went to see him—carried him the food he needed, found out from him the names of his friends, and wrote letters to them in German.

One day he said to her: You cannot be my girl of the four leaf of clover. You have eyes like the heaven, like mine; but her eyes were like eyes of a deer that is afraid.

Then he told the story of the clover, and showed her the creased and faded leaf.

It seemed almost a miracle that the fragile, crumbling little thing should not have been lost to all these months. But no Roman Catholic devotee ever clung more superstitiously to a relic than did Karl Reutner to his four leaf of clover.

Often in his delirious attacks he would call for it, and not be pacified until the nurses, who had learnt to humor the whim, would put the paper ​into his hand. Now that he was better, he kept it carefully in the inner compartment of his pocket-book, and rarely took it out. It was enough to look in and see that it was safe.

Karl's only relatives in this country were a brother and sister who lived in Chicago. The brother was a manufacturer of fringes, buttons, and small trimmings, and the sister had married an engraver, also a German. They were industrious working-people, preserving in their new homes all the simple-hearted ways of their life in the old world. When Karl was drafted for the war, they had tried in vain to induce him to let them put their little savings together to buy a substitute for him. No, no, I will not have it, he said; my life is no more than another man's life that it should be saved. There are brothers and sisters to all. I have no wife; it is the men without wives that must go to fight. On these two simple house holds the news from Gettysburg fell with crushing weight.

Karl Reutner, killed; only three words, and there were long columns of names with the same bitter word following them. But into few houses was carried greater sorrow than into these. Wilheim Reutner and Karl were twins. From their babyhood they had never been separated, had never disagreed. Together they had come to the new world to seek their fortunes; together they had slowly built up the business which their father had ​followed in Berlin; they lived together; and Wilhelm's babies knew no difference in love and care between their uncle Karl and their father. The sister was much younger; Wilhelm and Karl had laid by their first earnings to bring her out to join them, and for some years they had all lived in one family in such peace and happiness as are not often seen among laboring people of American birth. No thought of discontent, no dream of ambition for a higher position, entered their heads. Home love, comfort, industry, and honesty—these were the watchwords of their lives, the key-notes of all their actions. When Wilhelm and Annette were married, there was no change in this atmosphere of content and industry, except an immeasurable increase of happiness as child after child came, bringing the ineffable sunshine of babyhood into the two households.

Just before the sad news of Karl's death, a new and very great element of enjoyment had been introduced into Wilhelm's family. Margaret Warren had come to live in his house.

Margaret Warren was the daughter of a Congregationalist minister. Her life had been passed in small country villages in the Western States. She had known privations, hardships, discomforts of all sorts; her father was a gentleman and a scholar, and wretchedly out of place in the pioneer western life; he did not understand the people; the people misinterpreted him; his heart was full of love for ​their souls, and a burning desire to bring them to Christ; but he wounded their self love, and they offended his instincts, at every step; the consequence was, that he found himself at a middle age with an invalid wife and six children, a disappointed, unsuccessful man. Margaret was the eldest daughter, and for the first fourteen years of her life, her father's constant companion. The only unalloyed pleasure he had was in the careful training of her mind. Margaret Warren was, at sixteen, a rare girl; she was far better fitted than most boys are, to enter college. But all this learning did not in the least unfit her for practical duties. She was her mother's stay as well as her father s delight; she understood housekeeping as well as she did Greek, and found as true a pleasure in contriving how to make a garment out of slender material, as in demonstrating a problem in Euclid. Until her seventeenth year she had been unflaggingly brave, hopeful, content, in this hard life. But as she saw the years slowly making all the burdens heavier her mother growing feebler, the family growing larger, she began to ask herself what the end would be; and she found no answer to the question. A vague feeling, that she herself ought to find some way of making her mother and her five little brothers and sisters more comfortable, haunted her thoughts by night and day. She saw the secret of her father's failure more clearly than the most discontented of his parishioners ever saw it. She ​knew things could never be any better. Oh, why did papa ever undertake to preach," she said to herself, over and over; her affectionate reverence for him made her feel guilty in the thought. Yet it pressed upon her more and more heavily.

Each place we go to is a little poorer than the one before it, she repeated, and yet, each year we need a little more money instead of less; and mamma is growing weaker and more tired every day. If I could only get a good school I could earn as much money as papa does by preaching. I know I could teach well; and then I could learn too. Unconsciously to herself, the desire for a wider knowledge and experience of life entered largely into Margaret s desire to be a teacher. She had uncommon executive ability, and, without knowing it, was beginning to be cramped by her limited sphere.

Through the help of a clergyman in Chicago, an old class-mate of Mr. Warren's, Margaret realized her dream. It was a bitter day for the little household in the parsonage when she left them. With tears streaming down their cheeks the children clung to her, and her mother was pale and speech less with grief; but Margaret bravely kept back all traces of her own sorrow, and went away with a smiling face. The next day she wrote to her mother:—

Dear, precious, tired Mamma; it would break my heart to think of you working away without me ​to help you, and when I recall your face on the door-step yesterday, if I were not home up by an instinct that I shall very soon help you much more than I could at home. Only think, I can already send you seventy-five dollars every quarter—half as much as papa's salary; and I know I shall very soon save a great deal more.

Margaret was right. Such a teacher as she had only to be known to be recognized. Her text-book training had been singularly thorough and accurate, but this was the least of her qualifications as a teacher. In the first place she loved children with all her heart; in the second place, she loved nature and truth with the passion of a devotee. That life could be dull to a human being was a mystery to her; every new discovery in art or science was a stimulus and delight to her; the simplest every day fact had significance and beauty to her; her own existence was rich, full, harmonious, and out of her abundance she gave unconsciously far more than she dreamed to every being that came in contact with her. There was not a pupil in her school who was not more or less electrified by her enthusiasm and love. The standard of scholarship was rapidly raised; but this was a less test of her power than the elevation and stimulus given to the whole moral tone of the school in which she taught. Teachers as well as pupils were lifted to a higher plane by intercourse with her.

​At the end of two years Margaret was the principal of the highest school in the city, at a salary nearly twice as large as her father's. But her ambition was not yet satisfied. She longed to be at the head of a school of her own, where she should be untrammeled in all respects, and free to carry out her own theories. This was her one air-castle, and, with a view to this, she planned all her life. Three hours every day she spent in hard study or reading. Only the best of constitutions could have borne such a strain; but Margaret had come, on her mother's side, of an indomitable New England stock. It was in carrying out this scheme of educating herself more perfectly that Margaret had come to live in Wilhelm Reutner's house. Wilhelm's two little daughters had been in her first school. They were singularly gentle and well-bred children, and held themselves always a little aloof from their companions. One day Margaret discovered accidentally that they spoke both German and French fluently. How is this, little ones, she said; "who taught you so many languages?

Oh, papa always speaks to us in German, and mamma in French, said they.

And Uncle Karl too, added the youngest, with a sad face. Uncle Karl that has gone to the war.

That afternoon Margaret walked home with the children from school. As they drew near a block ​of small two-story wooden houses, Margaret's eye was attracted by two balconies full of flowers. Oh, how lovely! she exclaimed.

That's our house. Those are Uncle Karl's flowers, cried both the children in a breath; we take all the care of them now he has gone. He said we might.

The front of the little house was like a terraced garden. Margaret had never seen anything like it. Every window-sill had its box of flowers, and above the door was a balcony full to overflowing of geraniums, nasturtiums, fuchsias, and white flox. Margaret stood for so long a time looking at them that the children grew impatient, and pulled her with gentle force into the house.

Annette came forward with a shy, sweet courtesy to meet the unexpected guest.

We talk your name very much, Mademoiselle, she said; to see you will be to the father a happiness. Then Wilhelm thanked her with warm fervor for her goodness to the children, and before he had finished speaking, the children, who had disappeared upon entering the house, came running back with their hands full of scarlet, yellow, and white blossoms, and showered them upon Margaret's lap.

But my children, my children! remonstrated their mother.

Uncle Karl said we might pick always some for a pretty lady, cried they; and is not the ​teacher pretty? Did we not tell you she looked like the Madonna?

"It was not the first time that Margaret's face had been compared to that of the Sistine Madonna; always, however, with a qualification, for that calm and placid Madonna had far less joy in her face than was in Margaret Warren's bright countenance.

Yes, the children say rightly, young lady. They have done well to bring you the flowers, as our far away Karl would have done, said Wilhelm, gravely, still standing before Margaret.

Margaret felt as if she were in a dream. She had come expecting to find two plain, honest working people, to whom she could without difficulty say that she would like to come and board in their family for the sake of learning to speak German and French. Instead, she felt as if she had been received by a prince and princess in disguise: so subtle a power have noble thoughts, simplicity of heart, and love of beauty to invest men and women with a dignity greater than splendor can give.

Margaret made stammering words of her request. It was received with great surprise, but with the same dignified simplicity of demeanor and speech.

We have never thought that a stranger could come under our roof, and pay for the food, said Annette, with a shade of pride in her voice; and it might be that our living would displease you."

​The teacher is not as a stranger, when Annettechen and Mariska so love her, said Wilhelm, who was on Margaret's side from the beginning. But do you remember, young lady, that you have never known such ways as are our ways? It would be a great shame to my heart if you were not at ease in my house; and we can not change.

With every word that Wilhelm and Annette spoke, Margaret grew more and more anxious to carry her point.

It is you who do not know, she said, how very simply and plainly I have always lived at home, and it is so that I would wish to live even if I had much money. My father is a poor minister; my mother has never, in all her life, had so pretty a home as this.

And Margaret sighed, as she looked around at the picturesque little sitting-room; its white porcelain stove was now converted into a sort of altar, holding two high candlesticks, made out of the polished horns of antelopes—a crimson candle in one, and a yellow one in the other, and between the two a square stone jar of dark, blue and gray Flemish ware, filled with white amaranths. Low oaken chests, simply but quaintly carved, stood on each side the stove, and a row of tiles, maroon colored and white, with pictures of storks, and herons, and edelweiss flowers, and pine trees on them, was above each chest. The ​furniture was all of oak, old and dark. It had belonged to Annette's mother, in Lorraine. The floor was of yellow pine, bright and shining, and gay braided rugs, with borders of tufted worsted balls, covered the greater part of it. Flowers filled every window, and on the walls were prints of Albert Durer, of Teniers, of Holbein, of Raphael—cheap prints, but rendering the masters works truthfully. In one corner stood a large violoncello, and in another, above a shelf filled with music, hung a violin case wreathed with ever greens. This was Karl's. In the other two corners were odd oaken cabinets with glass doors, and a figure of St. Nicholas on the top. On the shelves were wax and glass and wooden toys. These were the Christmas gifts of many years. The whole room was like a bit of the quiet German Tyrol set in the centre of the bustling and breathless American city; but Margaret did not know this. She only felt a bewildered sense of repose and delight and wonder, mixed with a yearning recognition of the beautiful life which must be lived in this simple home.

When Annette heard that Margaret's father was a poor pastor, her face lighted up. My mother also was the daughter of a pastor, she said; and is it then that the good pastors are poor in this country also?" Annette had thus far known only rich and prosperous ones in the rich and prosperous city.

​Wilhelm, also, felt that a barrier was removed between him and the teacher when he heard that she had lived as a daughter lives, in the home of a poor country pastor. He no longer feared that she could not be content in his house; and his heart had been strangely warm towards Margaret from the first moment.

There is Karl's room, which would be sunny and warm, if it were not too small, he said inquiringly, turning to Annette.

"And the big closet with a window—would it not be that the teacher could use when she would study? said Annette, who remembered the little room in which her grandfather had kept his few books, and sat when he was writing, and must not be interrupted.

Margaret's face flushed with pleasure. The matter was evidently settled. It was already beginning to be a matter of hospitality in these kindly hearts, and the only question was how they could make her happiest and most comfortable. The children danced with joy, and taking Margaret's hands in theirs, they drew her towards the stairway, saying:

Come, see Uncle Karl's room; it is the nicest in the house.

It was, indeed, a lovely room, with its one window looking out on the great blue lake.

It is too small, said Annette, as she stood with Margaret on the threshold; but there is also this closet, and she threw open a door into a second ​still smaller room, also with one window to the east.

Oh! exclaimed Margaret. Can you spare them both? That will be perfect. My good friends, I cannot thank you enough.

Wilhelm looked at Margaret with a steadfast, half-dreamy gaze. The